Road Warrior: No plans for Belfair Valley work in 2018

The in basket: Charles Frederick, who lives on West Belfair Valley Road, which becomes Old Belfair Highway when it reaches Mason County, writes: “It is my understanding that the road from Gorst to McKenna Falls Road is the responsibility of the city of Bremerton. This section runs through the city’s water shed.

“They did resurface the road from Gorst to about 20 yards past the Gold Mountain Golf Complex a couple of years ago, but not the rest of the road to the top of the hill. The road from the Gold Mountain Golf Complex to the city limit sign at the top of the hill is falling apart, with holes, deep dips, large cracks, and patches.

“When will the rest of the road will be repaired?” he asks.

The out basket: Thomas Knuckey of the Bremerton city engineers says continuing the improvement of the city’s portion of West Belfair Valley Road is not imminent.

“I understand your concerns,” he wrote to Charles, “(but) while we have no current plans to overlay that portion of Belfair Valley Road, we will be conducting a pavement assessment in 2018 that will provide a numerical ranking of all of our streets city-wide.

“We’ll use this data to help prioritize our pavement maintenance activities going forward. The city council has allocated a significant amount of funding to our street program for 2018; however, those funds have been prioritized for work on residential streets over arterial and collector roads, given the lack of maintenance on residential streets in recent years.

“As always, we’re constantly looking for outside funding in the way of grants to pursue roadway improvements for our arterial and collector roads, and will continue to do so.

“As we receive the pavement condition data this coming spring, we’ll present this to the mayor and city council along with our recommendations for their input and consideration. Since Belfair Valley Road is classified as a major collector and since the condition is poor, it will definitely be one of the roads discussed as we further develop our maintenance program.”

Given that process, I asked Thomas what the circumstances were that got the road paved up to the golf course.

“We obtained funding from PSRC for this project in 2013,” he said, “and constructed the project in 2014. I don’t remember the specifics that led to us stopping the work at the golf course, but road condition was definitely a factor. It’s always a balancing act for us when we’re putting together these grant applications to ask for as much project scope (and budget) as we think we’ll get, while not over-asking and getting nothing.”

Have a question for the Road Warrior? Call 360-792-9217 or email tvisb@wavecable.com.